I have known every single one of them for at least ten years, and some members of the band go back a lot further than that. Every single member of the band has been involved in music for as long as I can remember. So we have a couple of things in common. When we are not playing, writing or recording we are hanging out in each others company.

Our creative nerve centre is wherever MC Bot's computer is located at the time. Like the Open University, we go to it. When our lives are going smooth, MC Bot and Headstone are working daily on the business of acquiring and mutating sounds, writing and arranging new tunes and lyrics. Mister E. Wilson and Agent Wilson are often in there too, making their contributions.

Our social headquarters are at the Racehorse pub in Abington Square, where Pete Heyworth the landlord is endlessly patient with us. Sometimes he even lets us win the pub quiz. This is not as trivial as you might imagine. Beer is at stake. Free beer. Cheers, Pete.

We also get to play at the Racehorse a lot. Sometimes we play in the front bar at Pete's invitation. I enjoy these gigs immensely, because it's a top challenge to take the pub on a quiet Sunday night and turn it into a dark and rocking scene. This is largely achieved with the help of our good friend Johnny P from Rugby. He will show up with all manner of wild lighting, running movies and interference all over the set. Johnny has worked with Spacemen 3, Broadcast and the Telescopes. He's a psychedelic master. Once projected the legend "IN DUB WE TRUST" across the stage for an hour.

Likewise, these sessions would be infinitely poorer if it wasn't for the work of Steve Ward of Phoenix Soundworks. Steve is the evil mastermind behind Fat Controller, who are also very much sample-based rock, so he soon got the hang of mixing Wilson, and he's been immeasurably helpful to the band over the last year or so. The people who turn up and listen do their bit as well. We've had some top nights down there.

We play in the back room of the Racehorse too. This room is like the special room. It's quite an operation to put on a show there, but we have done it ourselves once or twice. More often we have found ourselves invited to play events back there, often for good old righteous punk rock people like Stuff the Jubilee or the Anti-Nazi League. In the back room there is a big old PA, with Skinner at the controls. Skinner lives around the corner from me. He is involved with an ancient, enormous German Shepherd and I've seen him playing the penny whistle with my own eyes. He has a sort of Celtic dub outfit called Tarantism, coming to a festival in your town soon.

When we're not in the Racehorse we tend to gather in each others houses, where we smoke while backgammon and records are played. Some of Wilson's favourite records lately:

1. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
2. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
3. New Order - Get Ready
4. Asian Dub Foundation - Enemy of the Enemy
5. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi & the Pink Robots
6. The Congos - Heart of the Congos
7. Spacemen 3 - Forged Prescriptions
8. Nortec - The Tijuana Sessions Vol 1 & 2
9. Bunny Wailer - Blackheart Man
10. The Clash - The Story of the Clash
11. Trojan Upsetter - Box Set
12. Camper Van Beethoven - Box Set

1. Ten Foot Ganja Plant - Midnight Landing (ROIR)
2. Terry Hall & Mushtaq - The Hours of Two Lights (Honest Jon's Records)
3. Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (EMI)
4. Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner (XL-Recordings)
5. Wepunex Project - South Wales No Frills (Label unknown)
6. Killing Joke - New Album (Label unknown)
7. Lee Perry - Arkology (Island)
8. Badawi - Soldier of Midian (ROIR)

WILSON HEADSTONE Guitar scientist. Ringleader, programmer, arranger. Professional musician since September 1984. Fender Telecaster, Burns, Yamaha, Hughes & Kettner Tour Reverb. Committed, tragically, to raising a New Kingdom Egyptian villa on the site of his Lebanese-style NN1 bolt-hole.

AGENT WILSON Percussionist extra-ordinaire. Timbales, congas, bongos, daraboukas, blocks and bells, all piled into the back of a silver Peugeot station wagon and ready to go. Formerly with Mystic Crew, Stranger Tractors, Sumosonic and WARM. Has lived his entire life within the NN1 postal area.

MISERY WILSON Bass vibrations. Third original founder member and officially The Quiet One. Fender Precision with Marshall amplification. This is her first serious group, although she used to jam with members of Spacemen 3. Also worked as a studio engineer. Without Misery we would be nothing.

STEVIE G. WILSON Electric guitarist & monkey god. Telecaster troublemaker and ambassador for the sport. Also leads his own band, P-Hex, a gargantuan funk machine and possibly the only Northampton band ever to play Washington DC go-go music. Easily the most even-tempered member of the band, Steve has, nonetheless, been known to manifest as Thanos The Monkey God.

MISTER E. WILSON Sinister electronic shouting man. Live electronics from this disturbing individual. Paces the Streets Of Fear at the dark end of the Internet, leaking Wilson propaganda along the way, and once made a country and western album. Conspiracy theorist, cabbalist, maker of ridiculous wee noises that slice through the mix and upset all, Mister E. Wilson is the mother of all secret weapons. elsewhere..

MC BOT Bullhorn Champagne VST. Fat Controller are mental, wrote Kerrang! Magazine. MC Bot was the singer. Has also sung with President Bush (really), Sumosonic and the Rocking Turks. With Wilson he does so much more, writing, programming and producing. Has been known to get beaten up by members of the audience before going onstage.

MC GEORGE The voice of Istanbul MC George, who guests with us on Istanbul Connection, has a life story that has taken him from a playboy lifestyle in sixties Istanbul to a flat above the Fire Station in downtown NN1. A true Vegan with a supernatural sense of timing, his eccentric take on the English language can sometimes obscure the magnitude of his adventures. In a certain way he functions as the Wilson guru. Once declared, in the middle of a New Year's Eve party, "When I was a little boy, they hanged the Prime Minister."

DJ ANDY SKANK The reggae revolutionary Another guest who often adds another dimension to Wilson gigs. Andy's monthly SKANK night at the Labour Club is a favourite place for Wilson to hang out. He plays an extraordinary spectrum of Jamaican music, from ancient sixties ska, through rocksteady (my personal favourite!) and classic seventies roots rock reggae, all the way to the mad techno/ska crossovers of today and tomorrow.